Foulks' Tales From Korea: First Trip to Busan

I finally made it outside of Changwon for reasons other than work. This past Saturday, I went to Busan with Mark, a friend and coworker of mine, and his friend Ian (whom I only met for the second time). It was a busy, exhausting day, but I had a lot of fun and met some cool people there.

We took the 8:00 bus from Changwon to the Sasang Bus Terminal in Busan. The trip lasted approximately 30 minutes. I was surprised at how cheap the tickets were. The cost was only 3,700 won for the one way trip to Sasang. Unlike Changwon, Busan has a subway system which we used for the next part of our journey. Busan's subway system seems just like any that could be found in America with one major inconvenience. The ticket vending machines do not accept credit cards. If you do not have a Mybi card (a prepaid transportation fare card of which I left at home), you must pay with cash and of course, the machines don't accept notes greater than 1,000 won. (It doesn't help that the ATMs will only distribute 10,000 won notes.)

The Busan subway can be extremely crowded at times.

Our first stop of the day was at a Toastmaster's meeting where Ian is a member. Toastmasters is an international organization to help people become better public speakers and communicators. The meeting was held at Pusan National University. From what I could gather, aside from Ian, the club consisted of Koreans looking to improve their English speaking abilities. Some people volunteer to give prepared speeches at each meeting and others volunteer to perform evaluating roles. At this meeting there was only one prepared speaker. I think it was his first speech as a member. In my opinion, he did a great job as he looked comfortable (most Koreans are very shy when speaking English) and delivered a humorous speech which seemed to hold the audiences' attention.

After the prepared speeches, the club has a session called Table Topics. During this session, people select an unknown topic and deliver a 1-2 minute speech. I was "volunteered" to participate in this. I agreed and delivered a short speech and the topic was "My Mentor". Mark and Ian also participated during this session but had different topics. I must say that I was impressed that the Korean members were making a serious effort to improve their skills and confidence in using the English language. Afterward, we went out for coffee and sandwiches with some of the club members.

After lunch, it was back to the subway to head to our next destination. We went to go help out at an Olympics style event that was being held for children from an orphanage. A local volunteer organization for expats was sponsoring the event so there were volunteers not only from Korea, but from other countries such as America, South Africa, China, and Iran. The children seemed to have a fun time interacting with the volunteers while playing games and doing other activities. After the children returned to the orphanage, most of the volunteers gathered at a coffee shop to socialize and eat pizza, chicken, and bread (various cakes and such). I met some very interesting people not only from Korea but other parts of the world as well.

When the event was over, Mark, Ian, and I went to a couple foreigner bars in Busan. The first was a New Zealand style bar called The Beach. As the name implies, the bar is on the street that runs along Gwangalli Beach. However, we were unsure which direction it was from where we were so twice Mark asked a foreigner, "Where is The Beach?" Both times, they must have thought Mark was crazy because they pointed to the beach across the street and said, "Um.....right there." However, after clarifying he meant the bar, both foreigners did not know where it was. We eventually found it and had a couple beers while rugby played on the TV above the bar. Afterward, we went to an Irish bar called Wolfgang's near the more famous Haeundae Beach. After a Guinness, we decided it was time to head home. It had been a long day and we were tired. There was a bus terminal near Haeundae Beach so we caught a bus back to Changwon which arrived around 12:30. Despite being very tiring, I had a good time in Busan. I would be willing to go back to Toastmasters as well as help out again with the volunteer organization.